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Google Drafts Cloud Printing Plan For Chrome OS
snydeq writes "Google is unveiling early-stage designs, software code, and documentation for a project whose goal is to let users of the company's Chrome OS print documents to any printer from any application. Called Google Cloud Print, the technology would dispense with the need to install printer drivers by routing print jobs from Web, desktop, and mobile applications via a Chrome OS Web-hosted broker. 'Rather than rely on the local operating system — or drivers — to print, apps can use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs. Google Cloud Print will then be responsible for sending the print job to the appropriate printer with the particular options the user selected, and returning the job status to the app.'"
So Google invented a print server. Brilliant!!! Those guys are AMAZING. What will they do next. :P
MG
I didn't think of this one. Google now wants to see everything you print too? George Carlin was right when he said we would eventually trade all of our freedom in exchange for new toys.
make it work when the internet goes out?
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
let users of the company's Chrome OS print documents to any printer from any application.
Lets see here...
www.goatse.cx
File -- Print -- Select Printer: CEOOFFICEPRINTER.Apple.Com
Pages: 200
PRINT
I work as teacher, mostly for fun, and got suckered into supposedly being admin for the school network. In reality I'm a general janitor / IT-support though. I have next to no time to spend on actually setting infrastructure. If anybody gives me a simple solution for printing any document, from any operating system on any computer easily to our public printers I'd give them a big, wet kiss. I certainly don't know any easy way of doing it now, because adding printers to students laptops is a f***king bother, and there's always some weird problem.
I'm certainly sure there's lots of other uses for this, aswell as lots of places it won't be usefull.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Why is this item red?
Because Google will support color printing?
Not just google sniffing the document. Having the government subpoena the document from Google (as it will be somewhere in their huge data store). Of course, my printer (and yours too) don't have an outward facing IP and we don't port forward our routers to it either for exactly the reason you mention. Spam, or just some jack nut deciding to waste all your paper and toner.
I guess I would have more faith in it if it does the equivalent of creating the print file, sending that back to your Chrome device, then your chrome device does the equivalent of the old ability to just copy formatted print file to a printer. So nothing on your network gets exposed. But certainly there would need to be a very stringent policy on what Google could do with your print file and how long they could store it (0 seconds!).
Sure it will allow you to print to any printer...that can be accessed via the internet. I'd wager that's a step a large number of people haven't taken when it comes to their home networks.
I'm trying out the alpha, and the printer has an undecipherable message.
PC_LOAD_GOOGLE
What does that even mean?
Reply to That ||
I always thought it was a terrible design to require installation of hardware-specific drivers for a remote printer. You know how you get some crummy nonstandard print status window popping up when you print? Like it will be this hyperbranded thing with a zazzy, colorful diagram of your printer and "buy toner online now" button on it. Almost indistinguishable from a pop-up advertisement except that there is a progress bar showing your print job going through. As far as I can tell, that is the only reason for there to be local drivers for remote printers--so manufacturers can bring up their fancy nonstandard dialogs out of some paranoid necessity to convince you your printer is not a commodity item. In fact, they would probably prefer you called it something other than a "printer", i.e. your "HP-SmartPaperDuplicator TM".
So, yes, this is one thing Google seems to be getting right--a standard print dialog with no local drivers for remote printers.
Frankly, I have zero interest in sending my printed documents through Google's grubby hands. However, I think that their implementation shows real promise and(as is even mentioned in their documents) it would not be difficult for 3rd parties to run their own "cloud" print servers.
Even for comparatively small organizations, being able to ditch the ghastly nuisance of driver-shuffling and the more-or-less-strictly-LAN-bound world of SMB printer sharing, for a system that will work on any device with internet access to the organization's print host and the ability to spit out a PDF would be great. Google's approach may or may not be the best approach to the reinvention of the print server; but it has strong potential to be good enough quite easily amenable to 3rd-party implementation, build largely on standardized components(HTTP, PDF, PPD, bit of XMPP, etc.) and Google's support might help it reach critical mass.
Of course, my printer (and yours too) don't have an outward facing IP and we don't port forward our routers to it either for exactly the reason you mention.
This wouldn't necessarily pose a problem.
Google for Domains customers can install a small app to go on a Linux server which communicates with them and allows you to integrate your systems with theirs. It gets around the firewall by the simple expedient of establishing the connection from the inside out. If you were to integrate that with Zeroconf - abracadabra! Any Google user can indeed print directly to all your printers.
I wouldn't be too surprised to see something like that built into Chrome OS.
What won't it do to convince you that you need to do something half way across the world using systems under their control, what you once did perfectly in your office?
You've obviously never printed something remotely to Kinkos. That feature is convenient and can be a life-saver sometimes.
This doesn't mean that everyone will start printing remotely 100% of the time, but personally, I'd be glad to have this feature -- even if I only very rarely use it. If Google made it easy enough, I could see myself printing from my phone, from my television set up box, and whenever I'm away from my home or office, or my printer is broken, or my printer doesn't support the colors I want, the particular size, or the quantities of copies I want.
Also, this means that Google could lower the barrier of entry for every mom and pop printer store out there to be able to work like Kinkos, and this should facilitate economies of scales and reduce the cost of printing (Kinkos is nice, but its prices can really be high sometimes).